Thus Am I the Prophet
by Disguise of Carnivorism
Summary: Her eyes are only marginally less clouded than his own. /In which an OC-insert is perhaps a bit more discerning than most./
1. Chapter 1

**Scourge's Note:** Because OC-insert fics are awful.

* * *

_And oh! graves of the deserted!_  
_These shall speak, each as their voices shall be loosed._  
_And the day is dawning._

The colors were wrong, people looked too definite; everyone's voice fit their personalities far too well. It was as if she were viewing her own world through a stained glass window, a lens of crimson over the harsh reality it tried to distort. And yet it was far more real than the world she had slipped through—it was engaging, it was demanding, she couldn't turn away from the world _he _was creating.

There were moments when she could hear the Latin chanting, could hear the screeching of the violins. _Kyrie Eleison_, _Domine Kira_. It was his world to toy with, the tapestry let out beneath his finger tips. He was the mortal god with the golden eyes—Kira the executioner. It was horrifying to be so captivated by his laughter, to be so enthralled by his eyes.

He didn't look human, not like the humans she remembered. But those memories had begun to fade; her vision had adjusted to the cartooned world she now inhabited, her mind learned to comprehend its foreign words, learned to comprehend the forgotten past, to better understand the future she had foreseen.

The stairs, the heart... She had read his pathway so many times—the worn and beaten trail, covered in blood and death—but she had never truly seen his footprints. For how could she when she had seen the world in black and white?

It was a parallel dimension, a world running beside hers, a contradicting truth in every sense of the word. And he was at the center of it. Light Yagami's pen dictated the fates, his voice spoke through the people. He was not Icarus, but neither was he Daedelus; he was the sunlight they both strived for.

And it was when he smiled, leaning back in his chair to stare at her, contemplating how to dispose of her—it was only then that she knew exactly what Misa had seen in him. And it was terrifying.


	2. Chapter 2

**Scourge's Note:** The drabble-story continued. Poems at the top are parts of Judith, by Adah Isaacs Menken.

* * *

_See ye not what is written on my forehead?_

She didn't belong; her reflection didn't look like theirs. Her skin was softer about the edges, not so defined; there was no ink to her, no sharp features. She seemed blurred in comparison her blue eyes, like watercolor spilled upon a blank canvas. Her voice would never match theirs—it was only a voice, where theirs were an extension of their souls.

And they could see that, when they looked at her. They could see her alien features, and they repressed a shudder. Few spoke of it; it was Light himself who first bothered to mention anything of it.

"There's something wrong with your skin." His clear voice had been soft and yet authoritative; he had not even bothered to turn. He merely continued to write, continued to condemn in spite of her presence. She valued her life far too much to throw it away so casually. "There aren't any definitive lines on your face—to be frank, you look a bit out of focus."

He always managed a grin at that fact, and his golden eyes gleamed, because he knew he was right. In this world, this two-dimensional world of bleak colors and empty skylines, she would always look like an angel. Shrouded in heavenly light, all she lacked were the wings—the thought always made her cringe. She was never supposed to be the artificial goddess, and she hated him for twisting her thoughts to weave with his own.

But she would rather hear his comments on angels and demons than be exposed to the revulsion in his family's eyes. To see Soichiro Yagami's avoidance of her gaze, to see them skirt around her as if she were a disease—too polite to throw her to the wolves, too human not to treat her like a leper's shadow. Yes, in the end she preferred the challenge in Light Yagami's eyes.


	3. Chapter 3

_Creep back to your dark tents in the valley._  
_Slouch back to your haunts of crime._  
_Ye do not know me, neither do ye see me._

It would be all too easy to die, and she knew it. The world wasn't as kind as all the stories had made it; the world was cruel, the world was merciless, and she did not belong to the world at all. She stood beside him because she would die otherwise; she had no doubt the moment she left his life, the moment she explored this new world, that she would take his place on those rusted stairs, blood pumping from her chest.

But he was dangerous as well—a word out of place, one single mistake and she was lost to his illusion. Lost in the spell he was weaving. She amused him, but he did not need her; she was a threat, but she could be ignored. He was a patient god. Pen in hand, he studied her, deciding he could wait.

She knew about his world, but she did not know her place in it. When a butterfly flaps its wings, they say it causes a hurricane on the other side of the world. One insignificant action would be all it took for the world to be changed irrevocably, to the point where she could no longer recognize its twists and turns, to the point where she became lost in its labyrinth.

It had all seemed so easy in the manga, to twist the cords of fate—and yet each string had consequence. She hadn't realized how delicate his reality was, how intricately woven, and how adaptable he was. He could outwit her if he had to, he could outmaneuver her with ease. She only survived because of his pride, because she knew what he did not. To change the future would be to lose what power she had, and to fall victim to his ink stained hand.

So she became his third shadow, waiting behind Ryuk, watching as he ascended those golden stairs into divinity—an unstoppable force, like the sun rising above the earth… none could hide from his gaze. The masses bowed before his accumulating power, fear upon their faces, and she was crying as she stood beside him.

Because it was horrible, because she knew they were going to die, and because there was nothing she could do about it. Her survival came before all else; she had nothing left to choose.


	4. Chapter 4

_Practice what ye preach to me;_  
_I heed ye not, for I know ye all._  
_Ye are living burning lies, and profanation to the garments which with stately steps ye sweep your marble palaces._

He preferred not to be told the future; he didn't believe in prophecy. Light Yagami didn't like the idea that his life had been mapped out for him. He asked nothing of the world she came from, nor of the book he had been conceived in.

"Our world is fragile; it's torn apart by murderers and thieves." He smiled as he spoke, looking out the glass of the window, watching his defined world with the apathetic gaze of a god. "I knew that when I became Kira. I don't care if our god exists in some other dimension—if our lives can be dictated by an ultimate power, what is Kira but a faceless, supreme being? If he can change the world with nothing but a pen and some paper, he can change the future."

"No, that means someone has decided the future for you. Your life has been scripted out, every thought you have, every word you speak—everything you do is because it has already been created for you." She watched as he turned from the window, looking her over, as if to see the words he was supposed to say. But she didn't count; she was the outsider staring in through the glass, accidently fallen through by mistake.

"Dreams turn to nightmares, nightmares turn to prophecy, prophecy turns to reality—and where does that leave us? God is a watchmaker—he merely sets the system into motion, fixing when structural errors occur. The actual world itself is not his concern. Neither is it your writer's concern what path I choose to follow. The fact that I exist means nothing; the fact that they set a course that I might follow means nothing." He was no longer Light Yagami, he was Kira—self assured and confident that the unseen gods were on his side, that he had allies in unseen places, that his power was so great that not even their tethers could contain it. It sickened her to the core.

So she closed her eyes and talked of Death Note no more; Light Yagami had his own visions of paradise, none tainted with the sight of his own blood.


	5. Chapter 5

_The sword of the mouth shall smite them to dust._  
_I have slept in the darkness—_

They sat on his bed, the god and his blurred shadow—him with a pen in his hand, her with nostalgia in her eyes. Ryuk hovered above them, cackling at some unheard joke. The Shinigami had always thought she was a demon, with her bright skin and her colorful hair, caught between one guise and another, her eyes filled with an ocean.

She was the one to break the silence, to hear her own admission that the world she came from still existed, that it would exist without her. The fear that it would leave her behind. "In the place I come from, there was man called Machiavelli. You remind me of him."

He looked over at her, his face a mask, his mind churning behind its still surface. She continued in spite of his eyes; perhaps she continued because of them, because she loved the fact that he saw what she could be behind the alien features, behind the halting words and quickly fading accent.

"He said that it is better to be feared than loved, if one cannot have both." And she saw him, standing on that pedestal, above his people, all of them staring up at him with adoration in terror, the emotions wrapped so tightly together that none could tell the difference. Tears in his people's eyes, God have mercy, _Kyrie Eleison_. The words were too familiar. "A man shrinks more from betraying a man he fears than a man he loves. When I read that I thought of you, and how you have never loved anything in your life, and how you never will. At the time I didn't understand—I thought that it made you weak."

She paused, realizing she had his full attention. Behind his glass eyes, his entire mind was centered on her words, the secret they revealed causing his fingers to twitch. Because they both knew that it was no human that she was describing.

"You don't need people to love you, you don't need anything to love you. And so you love nothing in return; it is easier that way. The relationship between God and his people is uncomplicated by human emotion. You're removing yourself from humanity; you're just as removed from this world as I am. Soon you'll be exactly like me, an outsider looking in—the only true absolute ruler that could ever exist, god of justice and death."

Then and only then would he hear the church bells, clanging softly in the distance, mourning for the human he once had been. Only then would he see through the stained glass window, and learn to weep with her for the future he had lost.

But it would be a long time before such a day ever came, so he turned back to his Notebook and she turned back to her musings, each thinking of the haunting future that lay ahead, just beyond the horizon.


	6. Chapter 6

_Ye are living burning lies, and profanation to the garments which with stately steps ye sweep your marble palaces.  
Your palaces of Sin, around which the damning evidence of guilt hangs like a reeking vapor._

L was not what she had expected. She had always liked L, for his quirks, for his sense of righteousness. But without the separation of page and ink, he was different. He wasn't justice, just like Light wasn't justice. They were both men who pretended to be what they couldn't; they both toyed with the world around them as if they were gods.

He was no longer something she would have called adorable. He was frightening, just as frightening as Light. More frightening, because he had men at his disposal; Light had the tools he made himself, whereas L had power to begin with. Kira may be able to kill her, but L could do much worse. L could take away her freedom, her sanity—he could lock her in a prison cell and never let her out, if he felt justified. L didn't need reasons because he _was_ reason.

She had no evidence, she had nothing to protect herself, so she could only watch the two of them back to back (face to face), swords in hand, leaning in for the kill. Kira the fallen angel and L the masked figurehead—Ryuzaki and Light, two friends playing chess with one another. And what was she? An observer or a pawn?

She had always assumed that a window still blocked her from their world, from the death and the mind games—assumed that she was safe behind her alien features. But it seemed as if the world was cruelly dragging her into its heart, forcing her to play the game of politics, so that she might live to see another day.

It wasn't about morals anymore, it wasn't about right or wrong, it wasn't about gods and demons. It was about surviving, bleeding and torn, dragging herself day by day. It was about living beneath the sun's pale shadow, his golden eyes cruelly looking down upon her, laughing at the truth.

This was his world, and her morals no longer existed.


	7. Chapter 7

_When I shall return this sword to the angel, your foul blood will not stain its edge.  
It will glimmer with the light of truth, and the strong arm shall rest._

It was cold, colder than she had expected it to be. She had never imagined herself a traitor, hiding behind bars, staring up at the single eye of the camera, shuddering under the intensity of its gaze. A figurehead for the figurehead, a mask to shield the mask. L was made of perhaps even more layers than Light; he defeated the illusionist in his own art. L, Coil, Ryuzaki, Lawliet—they all belonged to him, all bowed to his whims, him, the man with the raven's eyes.

He was a monster; he was not justice. Not the justice she had believed in—an eye for an eye was not true retribution. And even as she curled in on herself, holding the pieces of her life together, she knew that they were both wrong, that they were both demons in their own right. Kira and L—it was hard to decide which was worse: the man who manipulated her so easily, broke her will effortlessly, who looked at her as if she were nothing to him but another piece on his chess board; or the man who stole her freedom, who locked her away from the sunlight because he disagreed with her, because she hurt his pride—who tortured her not for justice but for his own selfish peace of mind. The ends justify the means, an eye for an eye, the lesser of two evils. God have mercy.

There were no church bells in that prison cell—nothing but the cool robotic voice, pestering like a mosquito, buzzing away at her ear. Kira, Kira, Kira. It was the only word it knew, and it made her laugh because that's all L would ever know. He would only know Kira; his disguises were slipping away with his desire to see Kira's face, his true face—not the visage called Light Yagami.

She lost track of the days with ease. It was a relief to lose count, to forget how long she had been lost to the parallel dimension. In the prison, she could pretend she was one of them, that her skin was marked by ink-black lines, that her skin was a clear, single shade of color. The window separated her from the world once again, except this time it was they who looked in, not she who looked out. Still, she almost wept for joy at the sight of it.

She was not Kira. She was merely his shadow—his silent conscience speaking of things that did not exist and ideas that did not matter. She was irrelevancy, she was useless; people died because she could do nothing to stop it. All she could do was watch and wait. And L knew that, yet he asked anyway. Day after day, he asked, his robotic voice commanding. Kira. Kira. Kira.

Kira turned to Kyrie and Kyrie turned to Eleison. But Kira had no mercy for the wicked; he had no mercy for the obstacles that stood in his path. He destroyed all he touched because he believed he had no choice. All opposition must be destroyed, all mountains conquered. No army could stand against him, and certainly no man.

For despite his robotic voice, despite his masks and false names, despite his raven's eyes, L was nothing but a man—a man dressed in the garb of an immortal. And that was a sin that not even Kira could forgive.

God have mercy, because she would not.


	8. Chapter 8

He was still there behind those innocent eyes, behind those scripted out words, behind that ambitious smile. The masked illusionist still waited behind the charade that was Light Yagami, a child free from guilt and death. Even she had to admit it was his finest masterpiece, despite what he had given up to create it.

Light was wary around her because he had forgotten why he feared her, what threat she posed—and yet the emotions were still there. He had forgotten that she amused him; she had forgotten where she came from. Now she was simply an odd, quiet girl, sitting beside the blonde model without a word of protest on her lips.

Misa did all the complaining for her, because unlike her, Misa did not understand just what game she was playing. Yes, she was winning the game—but only because she had an achievable goal. In the end, none survived playing with matches. The Notebook took no survivors, and it was as patient and cold as Kira himself. It had given her the key to her world only to take it away again when she least expected it.

Misa didn't understand that her dates with Light were nothing more than comic relief to a dimension that existed outside her own, that her pathetic whining labeled her not as desperate, but as an idiot to a group of people she would never see. In her confusion she was losing the power she had gained through the eyes, and she knew it. She wasn't quite sure what she had lost, but she knew she had lost something powerful; her hold on Light was slipping and she was frightened she wouldn't be able to find it again.

That was why she would take the eyes from Ryuk for a second time in her life—that was why she would risk her already depleted life span for a man she had cornered into showing her affection that he did not feel. She knew what he was, she knew he felt nothing for his people. And yet she wanted the fallen angel's power—she wanted Kira to kneel to her. The fairy tale she described was only the consequence of her true desire: power over god himself… not gratitude, and certainly not love.

After Misa had left Light's room all those months ago in a daze of hormones, a drugged smile on her face as she left, Light had turned to Cassandra. His golden eyes had seethed, watching her alien features, the calculation blatant in his gaze. Her words had come back to them both—it is far better to be feared than to be loved. He turned from her, brooding on the advice she had given him—and they both knew that Misa did not fear him.

But in the room L had given them, the two prisoners he did not care for, the ones useless to him, like broken toys to be tossed aside—it was in this room that she began to fear losing him. She hated the frustration in his eyes, the way he ignored her. Once, his world had revolved around her (for the few moments she had posed a threat); and now that threat was gone. She was reduced to the title of pawn. She would never be a queen, she would never be a goddess, and no one joined Kira on that pedestal.


	9. Chapter 9

L was a petty child, playing with his newest toy—Kira, Light Yagami, the latest and greatest invention. And it made her sick, because only she could see it. Kira had given away his eyes to regain his status of Light, and the rest of the world had never seen as they had seen. So now only she was witness to L's true motives—Ryuk in the flesh, searching for entertainment through crimes that deserved justice. Watari had created a monster all those years ago, a spoiled, brilliant child—one that would throw Light away the moment he was finished.

Like a broken doll, like garbage, Light would be thrown into nothingness, because L didn't care. Or perhaps L would stuff him into some forgotten prison, watch as he slowly drove himself mad (Kira didn't do well inside stone walls), waiting for his entertainment to come back to life, for his broken doll to fix itself. That was not justice. Neither option was justice; it was human pride and avarice, a monstrous tale of power between two men who told themselves they were god. Only one was aware of the consequences.

Ryuzaki and Light sat before her on the couch, Light with his arms crossed, ignoring L's gaze. Kira would have met that gaze head on; Kira would have made it clear that he wanted L bleeding before his feet by the end of this; Kira would make it clear that L was no better than the common criminal, and that he would die for it. Kira was ruthless, but not so ruthless as L: Light and Ryuzaki, two masks of innocence—one of higher caliber than the other. But both did the job; both hid the loathing in their eyes.

And to think some people had thought them in love. She found it ridiculous now—she was laughing at the mere hint of it. It was too risky for either, to manipulate through sex and emotion. Both could win without taking such actions. There was no reason for them to become lovers, so they hated each other instead.

It was becoming more hilarious with each turn. What had once been horrifying was now humorous. She was laughing at them, laughing at the sheer idiocy of the game they were playing. Because only she saw where it ended now, on the floor in his enemy's arms, his name on a shadow's pen. Yes, such pleasant ways to end the game. She was laughing because she was losing her connection to them. She truly was his third shadow now. Indifferent and distantly amused, she waited like Ryuk, watching him play the game though she knew what he would do next.

She would never return home. There was no home for her to go back to. She would not fit there, though her physical body met all the requirements of that dimension. Her mind had been molded to the world of the Death Notes; she was as much a character in the game as they were—no longer an outsider, no longer a spectator standing on the sidelines. The old ways had changed; her old life was gone, a dream left to be forgotten.

She would die in a world filled with Shinigami and Notebooks, and secretly, she was glad.


	10. Chapter 10

_Graves of the living;  
Graves of the dying;  
Graves of the sinning;  
Graves of the loving;  
Grave of despairing;  
And oh! graves of the deserted!_

She had no name in the Notebook's realm; she had no true place in the world. But she felt in the moment when the detective fell to the floor, his eyes closing and the bells clanging off in the distance, that she had become Cassandra. She had known, she had always known—and yet the prophecy could not be prevented. She ran about the streets of Troy, warning of the end of Priam's prosperity, but they laughed—laughed because she had been cursed so that they would not listen, cursed so that she would speak but they would not hear.

It was Kira's final gift to her, as he held his enemy in his arms, watching as he faded from the world into nothingness—his final gift, the smile on his lips as she truly fell apart. Everything she had believed in, everything her world had taught her, was gone as his eyes closed shut. Kira's utopia was filled with nothing but death and fear, with ravens and church bells. It was not Eden, it was not Arcadia, it was not the paradise he had promised the world. He lived in a world where ravens wore the guise of doves, where his reflection showed a red-eyed demon, where only he could see that the sky was red as death.

He screamed because he saw what she had seen all along—that he was tearing himself apart from humanity, away from his people. He knew what lay beyond death, he knew that there were no Elysian Fields waiting for L; he knew that there was no Heaven and no Hell, nothing to remember him, nothing waiting for him. Mu was a cruel fate, but it was humanity's fate none the less—for in the Notebook's world, God was a watchmaker, distant and apathetic. His people suffered under his reign.

Cassandra was weeping. She was screaming for the women he would call goddess, for the sacrifices he would make. She sobbed for the world's fate under his fingertips—and then for his own death at the hands of a Shinigami, surrounded by the very men who loathed him, nothing but a murderer, a man who tried to change the world. A man who failed.

And what would become of his world, his new world that he so desperately believed in? It would sink back to the state it had once been in. Kira left as nothing but a memory, Guy Fawkes burned on November the Fifth—nothing more than ashes of a failed attempt at anarchy. Not even the fear of him would be remembered. He would be left to rot under the white child's hand, nothing but a puppet to be played with.

A broken toy.

Yes, she supposed even the watchmaker himself had a sense of humor.

The men ran from the room, searching for the Shinigami, leaving her and the corpse alone in the crimson shadows. She scooted closer to the man she had once hated and reached for his pale hand. Tears fell onto his pale, jaded face—her life for his. She could have saved him if she had not feared to die. She could have saved them all with her prophet's gift, if only they could have listened.

"Forgive me, Lawliet." Cassandra loved the corpse more than she could ever love the man. She leaned forward, whispering the words for fear that he might hear them: "I had no choice."

But Lawliet was gone and his masks were nothing more than empty promises.


	11. Chapter 11

Peace would kill Kira just as efficiently as any heart attack or bullet. It wasn't Near that had defeated Kira; nor was it Mello or Matt. It was time itself. Kira didn't do well inside stone walls, Kira didn't play well with an empty chessboard; Kira needed an advisory, just as God needed the Devil, just as the earth needed the sky. He was unbalanced, he was fumbling without a challenger to try to take the throne—he needed war, he needed death, he needed to battle the other mind, and there was no one left.

His goddess purred contentedly as she wrote away the lives of petty criminals; the mob fell down to worship him, to sacrifice their fellow men for his cause. His advisories consisted of a few middle-aged men, fooled by the very masks he had worn for years. He was dying in his contentment. He had been forced back into the world he had once known, the world before Kira, the world before the Notebook and L. The boredom would soon ensue, and Kira was beginning to panic. He would pace; he was waiting for L's return.

But in Kira's world, the dead were dead and did not return from the earth. Cassandra watched with tired blue eyes, feeling, as he was being woven away, that such things could not last. Kira could not last in the world he had created. The order of the universe would be restored, life and death would be restored, and Kira would die just like any other man. Cassandra remained silent, watching him continue to play the one-sided chess game, aching for an enemy to take up L's fallen queen.

His patience was dwindling, his prison was closing in on him; he was dying ever so slowly. Misfortune had caught up with him at last, and there was nothing to do but watch. Once more she saw Troy burning beneath the Greek flames, the Trojan Horse standing tall and upright inside the walls, ravens perched in the barren trees, waiting for the great city to fall. All for a golden apple that had fallen into mortal hands.

"Light," she said, watching as he stiffened, his pen-wielding hand stalling before writing another name. He was waiting for the gods to condemn him, waiting for the executioner to strike his final blow. Yes, even then, Kira had known he was going to die, and he hated himself for it.

"What do you want?" he asked shortly. He had long ago lost his tolerance for the stories she told, for the world she came from. He saw his own world ripped away from him far too shortly to listen of tales for another—he no longer had time to spare for leisure.

"Did I ever tell you that God himself set the means for his people's destruction right within the paradise he had given them?" She watched as he turned slowly, his golden eyes baleful, laughing at the irony of it. His memories had destroyed him; the child he had masqueraded as had not fared well with the death he had unleashed, for the memories were eating him alive.

"I know this story—the Tree of Knowledge. Am I correct?" he asked. She nodded slowly but continued in spite of his words.

"There was no logical reason for him to place that tree in the garden, not if they weren't supposed to eat it. What means of destruction have you given your people, Kira? You haven't given them trees or apples." She paused, waiting for him to answer; he said nothing, thinking back on the days when their relationship had almost been one of friendship, back when Eden had seemed possible.

"I don't know," he said, his masks slipping. The truth showed underneath, a twisting, shifting thing that changed at his whims. Kira's golden eyes looked sorrowful; his world filled with black as his vision fell back to the human tones it barely remembered, to a world without light.

"You gave them hope, a tiny star trapped inside a box, the one demon left after Pandora released hell upon this world. And wouldn't it be ironic if it weren't Adam or Eve that opened that box, but Kira himself."

He walked past her, to stare outside the window. Her warning rang like church bells in his ears; his golden eyes closed shutl his fingers twitched. Kira built his world, and with his own ink-stained hands he could destroy it just as easily.

A god made of glass flesh had no use ruling the earth and sky.


	12. Chapter 12

They were arrogant and they were young. L's apprentices were clearly far from the detective's mind when they had been selected. Cassandra remembered their lives with a sneer, and wondered just what had allowed them to join the game with such confidence.

Near and Mello, two shadows of the past trying their best to keep up with a man they never met. A man who had never believed in their potential or their use. A man who had sneered down on them, speaking to them only through a computerized image. She almost pitied them.

They stole his sister, they attacked his pride; they once would have been considered annoyances, flies to be swatted away, flying too close to the sun. But Light was slipping. His emotions were taking hold, and time was just around the other corner, catching up to him slowly but surely. Five years was too long; his skin was stretched across his hands, his eyes were cold and dark. He was aging as a god ages—not through wrinkles but through knowledge. His mind was heavy, and the Shinigami stood too close behind him.

He was going to die, his family was falling apart, his father would be blown to pieces in a warehouse, his sister would lose the ability to speak, his mother would become ever distant, and he would be left alone in his room with no one to talk to. A trickster who doesn't know solitude—slowly and surely, those words were becoming lies, a few more to add to his biography. Only she remained, only she stayed by his side—Cassandra, who watched the world fall down, Cassandra, who wept with the god of death.

Because the puppet strings were falling apart, because the blonde apprentices were coming in fast, because they weren't worth it but they would win anyway. Because life wasn't fair, because they both knew that, and because both had fought against it. Because her world was being taken away, and she didn't know where she would go once he was gone—because without him she had no place else to go.

L was tied to Kira through a silver chain, but she was his shadow. Once the sun disappeared, she would lose the light by which she was seen and she would fade into the background, just another shade of black.

And there was nothing left to say.


	13. Chapter 13

_I have slept in the darkness—_

_But the seventh angel woke me, and giving me a sword of flame, points to the blood-ribbed cloud, that lifts his reeking head above the mountain._

_Thus am I the prophet._

He didn't look like Kira. In that coffin, he looked like something that had once been Light Yagami. He looked like L Lawliet—eyes closed, no expression, an empty shell of humanity. The tears were lies because none of them knew, and those who didn't cry knew too much. Cassandra stood before him, waiting for his golden eyes to come alive with the ironic sense of humor that belonged solely to him. The man, the god, the fallen angel.

There were no visions of burning cities now; her gift was lost now that Apollo was dead. She reached for his dead hand, wondering at how the morticians had made it look innocent, as if the blood had not existed, as if the bullet holes weren't real. She didn't see Near at the funeral; she saw only the lies the world had given him. His dead-eyed sister, his distant mother, his betrayed team. They all hated him, but they stayed and wept all the same.

Only Cassandra had the gift to see all his faces, to see the truth through his thoughtful silence, to wait and watch as he destroyed the world around him. So many lies, so many deaths, so many words, so many years. And what had it gotten him but an empty grave? Matsuda stood, his eyes filled with Mu, staring down at Light with faked indifference, his insides uprooted in turmoil. The world had returned to its pleasant state of anarchy—Guy Fawkes was burning.

And what would she do, spectator turned pawn turned prophet? What could she do now that her visions had ended, that her world was in ruins? Outcast, demon, monster. Where would she go now that the world had cast her out?

His hand was cold, his vision had ended, and she had always known what fate awaited him. She could hear the gunshots, the laughter; she could see the blood dripping down his fingertips. She could see Near's emotionless face as he condemned him as just another murderer, just another corrupt, blood-thirsty monster who thought himself God.

Cassandra was left blind, but she knew where she might go, what path she might take. It didn't matter if the world did not exist outside the minds of men; it did not matter that Kira would never have made a difference. Nothing mattered. But she could have his revenge. She knew her way around his world well enough—she knew exactly what name to write in that Notebook, and she knew the face to assign it to.

Not even Near himself, the child who defeated the god, could escape the black pen of death. He had offended the shadow of sunlight—and for that, he must pay with his life.

Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.

_Kyrie Eleison._


End file.
